Cultural Literacy is collective consciousness—the common body of knowledge shared within a culture. For me, that culture is the good old U.S. of A.!
Cultural Literacy is our shared experience. If you grew up in America in the 80s like I did, you can reasonably assume that everyone around your age you meet today made a trail of Reese’s Pieces down their hallway ET style, read The Scarlet Letter and Romeo and Juliet in high school, wore Guess jeans and Reebok high tops, and watched the Challenger explosion on a TV/VCR combo that was wheeled from classroom to classroom on an AV cart on January 28, 1986.
As you talk with your new friend, you can make references to people, places, books, and pop culture and expect her to understand those references, because you both experienced and learned many of the same things growing up in America in the 80s, no matter your differences in family life, economic status, or hometown. An American is an American is an American.
We’re Killing Cultural Literacy for Kids
Our kids have pop culture literacy nailed. Every American kid is well versed in Star Wars, Disney, and Minecraft. But most of our kids will grow up without the connection that comes from sharing the history, information, views, and morals that have been building our world’s culture since the beginning of time.
We isolate our kids by age group and rarely expose them to people who could share their background with our kids, and thereby the background of our nation and our world. Our kids will grow up uneducated (and with a narrow perspective!) if their entire world (read: bubble) is filled with peers. And as we know, those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it. (Edmund Burke)
How Do We Transmit Cultural Literacy to Our Kids?
- We read Great Books to our kids!
- We let them talk to the neighbors!
- We shut down the Wi-Fi and start talking!
The second book in the Great Books to Read to Your BIG Kids series is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a great Halloween book to read to kids!
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is fascinating, scientific, spooky, and smart—and Jekyll and Hyde are referenced in nearly every Halloween cartoon and movie your kids will watch this October!
How to Read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Your Kids
I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to my kids when they were 6 and 4. The vocabulary and syntax are lofty, to be sure, but that’s exactly how you give your kids a great vocabulary! I read from the original text, and the kids followed along with the Great Illustrated Classics version. That series does a great job with relating the plot along with pictures; my kids flipped through the illustrations as I read from the real book. (But don’t cheat your kids out of the full text—more on why abridged classics stink is coming up in this series.)
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What’s your favorite Halloween book?
Follow my 31 Days of Great Books to Read to Your BIG Kids series! Subscribe to get the Kindle book FREE in November!
